Once more for redistricting reform

State Sen. Jeff Wentworth (R, San Antonio) has been the leading proponent of replacing Texas’ partisan redistricting mechanism with a bipartisan panel. He’s submitted legislation every biennium since 1993 in his quest to pass such a law. I have my doubts that he’ll ever succeed, but he did get his bill passed out of the Senate this week.

Senate Bill 1068 by Sen. Jeff Wentworth, R-San Antonio, would create a bipartisan commission to redraw congressional district lines every 10 years, beginning in 2011.

The Legislature would continue to handle redistricting of Texas House and Senate seats.

[…]

The eight voting members of the commission — four Republicans and four Democrats — would be chosen by the Legislature’s political caucuses. They would be unpaid.

Republicans cast all nine votes against the bill. But 11 Republicans joined 10 Democrats who voted for the measure.

The companion bill is still in committee, and that committee’s chair (Rep. Joe Crabb of Atascocita) is not known for his bipartisan urges, so I suspect Sen. Wentworth will get more opportunities to try again in the future.

A worthwhile question to consider is what makes for a “fair” redistricting process. It’s easy to say what an unfair process looks like – it’s what we already have. But in order to say that the process is fair, you have to define what its goals are first, and I don’t know that there’s a consensus around that. Is it “fair” if every district is competitive, for some value of the word “competitive”? I say that’s a noble goal, but not a realistic one, and in the end not really a fair one. Having 32 competitive districts necessarily means joining some deep-red parts of the state with some deep-blue parts, whether they have anything in common or not. Even if that were desireable, I don’t think it would pass muster under the Voting Rights Act, since it would likely dilute the strength of minority voters.

Personally, I think the best you can shoot for is to draw districts that are reasonably compact, and that preserve communities of interest. In particular, I think the goal should be to try not to lump together disparate counties, cities, or parts of cities in the name of some partisan goal. To me, a fair redistricting process would never have drawn districts like CD-10, which stretches from Austin to Houston (and which, ironically enough, is now one of the more competitive districts in the state, precisely because of how it’s drawn; in 2006, Democratic State Supreme Court candidate William Moody collected nearly 45% of the vote in CD10), or CD-07, which joined Montrose with the far west and northwest parts of Harris County.

Wentworth’s bill isn’t about fairness, per se, but about avoiding nasty partisan fights. Which is in itself admirable, but his approach may be insufficient. Over at BOR, John Courage explains why in this comment:

He wants to appoint, in his words, “four hardcore Republicans and 4 hardcore Democrats” and lock them in a room and let them fight it out and come up with a plan. To my way of thinking, that’s little better than appointing a committee of House and Senate members and letting them meet behind closed doors and duke it out. It still creates a very partisan redistricting committee that will be more concerned with protecting their fellow Republican and Democratic incumbents than they will be concerned about what is best for the people of Texas.

Courage supports a different approach, which is encapsulated in State Rep. Mike Villarreal’s HB3389. Not too surprisingly, that one’s still in committee, too.

Bottom line, I think there are some good ideas out there, but I’ll be surprised if it isn’t more of the same in 2011. Story link via Dig Deeper Texas.